


Henrietta: Welcome to the Barnes-yard

by FlamingoQueen



Series: Got Milk? and Other Tales [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Chickens, Crack Treated Seriously, Established Relationship, M/M, half-assed carpentry, much improved carpentry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23365453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingoQueen/pseuds/FlamingoQueen
Summary: Sam stares at the chicken. The chicken stares back. An egg rolls out of the cabinet and falls into Sam’s coffee with a hot splash.And then Sam’s cursing and scrambling for a towel, the chicken is making some unholy screeching noise and flapping its wings angrily, and Bucky’s drifting in from the other room all nonchalant like he hasn’t rewritten the rules of how a morning in their home ought to go.“Oh, you met Henrietta. Good.”(Or: The one where Buckyabductsrescues a chicken and Sam gets an unwelcome avian house guest.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Series: Got Milk? and Other Tales [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680559
Comments: 24
Kudos: 69
Collections: Sambucky Bingo





	Henrietta: Welcome to the Barnes-yard

**Author's Note:**

> So I have no hope whatsoever of actually getting a single bingo by the SamBucky Bingo deadline (I don't even remember what the deadline _is_ , to be honest), let alone blacking out my whole card, but I'm still going to start slinging Moo 'verse ficlets out into the world. This one is a fill for B1: Cock Cage. ^_^ It is 100% safe for work.
> 
> (It's also not the first chronological item in the series, despite being posted first. I just wanted to get it out there. I'll adjust the series order as I post other things over time.)

The sun streaming in from the soaring windows of their suite in Avengers Tower says it’s a glorious morning, but Sam isn’t feeling it. By all accounts, he slept like the dead—didn’t even hear Bucky getting up and moving around. But he woke up _still feeling_ like the dead, so it’s not going to be a glorious morning until he gets a chemical kick-start.

Thankfully, Bucky loves him and has already got the coffee made and on the heat ready to be poured, and Sam’s favorite mug left out by the carafe.

Sam goes ahead and fills that mug, and then sets it down on the counter so he can reach up to get the sugar out of the cabinet without sloshing.

The cabinet where they keep the sugar. Or where they used to keep the sugar, anyway.

Currently it contains a chicken.

“What.” Sam stares at the chicken. 

The chicken stares back.

An egg rolls out of the cabinet and falls into Sam’s coffee with a hot splash.

And then Sam’s cursing and scrambling for a towel, the chicken is making some unholy screeching noise and flapping its wings angrily, and Bucky’s drifting in from the other room all nonchalant like he hasn’t rewritten the rules of how a morning in their home ought to go.

“Oh, you met Henrietta. Good.”

“Henrietta” vacates the cabinet and hops down off the counter with a flutter of wings and an awkward thump. Then she’s off past the refrigerator and—from the sounds of her clucking—down the hall.

Sam dumps what’s left of his coffee into the sink and catches the egg as it rolls out of the mug. “Barnes.” He stares at the egg. “Why. Why is there a— Henrie— You named the— _Why?_ ”

Bucky grabs a second mug and pours a new cup of coffee, into which he puts the three spoons of sugar Sam likes from the drawer it’s apparently now living in. “I asked Tony about getting a chicken coop set up on the roof, and he said no chickens on the roof.” He hands the mug over. “So.”

“So.” Sam trades the egg for his coffee and gives the chicken the stink-eye as it stalks back into the living room with its head all snake-bobbing on its weirdly boneless neck. “No chickens on the roof, so you think they can be in our kitchen?”

Bucky snorts. “Hell no. There’s no way live chickens are allowed in the kitchen. But I didn’t ask about that, so technically, I haven’t been told no, and so therefore this is all _fine_.”

Sam downs half his coffee in big gulps. He’s going to need it this morning. “You’re going to get us evicted from this Tower. That man’s been trying to collect Avengers under his roof for over a year, and you’re going to get us kicked _out_. For a chicken.” 

Sam rubs at his eyes. “Where did you even get a chicken? And how did you sneak it in here?”

“Henrietta _just_ laid an egg, Sam. ‘It’ is a little insensitive.” Bucky pours his own cup of coffee.

“Is this about the cow-gun? Is this leftover farm animal solidarity? Are you feeling some sort of calling to be Old Buck’donald?” Sam supposes it’s possible. Bucky didn’t actually get turned into a cow, but he _did_ get shot with the cow-gun. It could be a leftover side effect.

“Moo, Sam.” Bucky smirks. “Also, no. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went for a coffee around the corner, and there was a chicken, and…” He shrugs.

Sam stares at him. “You stole someone’s pet chicken in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t _steal_ her. She was homeless. Coopless. _I_ ,” Bucky says, with wide eyes and a magnanimous gesture toward his sternum, “exhibited extraordinary levels of— Of—”

“Of?” Sam watches Bucky cast about for whatever words are supposed to follow that.

“Extraordinary levels of… Community… service.”

“Community service.”

“ _And—_ ” Bucky stares at him for a moment, obviously drawing several blanks in a row. “…charitable… donation of, uh, housing…”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“…supplies.” It's not a strong finish.

“You stole someone’s pet chicken, Barnes. Off the street. In the middle of the night.”

Bucky looks mulishly into his coffee. “It’s not like she had a collar and tags, with a number I could call. I couldn’t just let her wander around and get run over.”

There are a number of questions jostling each other trying to get Sam’s attention and therefore get themselves asked. 

Why the kitchen and not a sturdy cardboard box or a laundry hamper or the utility closet? Why not wake Sam up and tell him about the feathery house guest? 

When exactly did he ask Tony about the rooftop chicken coop thing? Last night after engaging in poultry abduction or earlier? How coincidental is the chicken? 

Are they putting up flyers? “Found: Fluffy orange chicken. Answers to Henrietta.” Or maybe just a picture of the bird with “Is this your chicken? Call 1-800-ALL-CAPS.”

Sam finishes sucking down his coffee. “I’m getting a shower, and then I’m going for a long walk. I don’t want a chicken in my kitchen—or anywhere else in this suite—when I get back. Not unless you’re roasting it.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “That’s fair.”

* * *

When Sam gets back, Bucky’s out on their ledge—the two-foot strip of security glass that Tony generously calls a balcony—hammering short planks of wood together into some kind of cage. The chicken is nowhere to be seen, and the cleaning supplies still out on the counter are clearly only there to reassure Sam that the place has been cleaned properly post-chicken.

Sam comes over to the window and leans against one of the frames. “I’m pretty sure that counts as the roof, Barnes.”

“‘sa valc’ny,” Bucky mutters around a mouthful of nails.

Sure it is. “Where’s Henrietta?”

Bucky spits the nails into his palm. “Nat agreed to let me keep her in her bathroom for a few hours until I got her coop sorted.” He nods toward a sketchpad with some scribbles on it, presumably the blueprints for this “coop.” 

“I’m going to stuff her in a bag—the chicken, I mean—and scale from Nat’s balcony to ours, so Henrietta won’t be entering our place at any point. I promise.”

Sam inspects the scribbles on the sketchpad while Bucky gets back to work. Granted, Bucky is not the artistic one in this suite. But this is the design of a chicken coop the way a five year old’s classic house-with-tree-and-chimney is the concept art for a cathedral.

“I think we should talk to Bruce about residual side effects from the cow-gun.”

“What?”

Sam lowers the sketchpad. “I think we should talk to Bruce about—”

“I heard you.” Bucky gives him a long-suffering look, like _Sam’s_ the one being unreasonable. “What does _this_ have to do with _that?_ I’m just trying to raise some city chickens. I can’t use the roof, I can’t use the suite, I think JARVIS would tattle if I used the empty suite across the hall…”

“Yeah, okay. But how long have you wanted to raise chickens?” Sam settles on the floor by him. “Because this is the first I’m hearing about it, and it’s coming maybe a whole two months after you got shot in the face with a mad science ray gun that was supposed to turn a super soldier into a super cow. The timing is suspicious.”

Bucky blinks. “Okay, I see your point. But in my defense… I might have always wanted to raise chickens and just forgot about it for seventy years for perfectly legitimate reasons involving massive amounts of electricity running through my brain on a regular basis.” He smiles serenely. “We may never know.”

Sam shifts around so he can dig his phone out of his pocket, and dials. “Hey, Steve. I got a question.”

“Oh, put it on speaker,” Bucky says. “I want to know, too.”

“Uh, Sam?” Steve asks as Sam taps the speaker button, clearly aware that something is amiss. “Is everything—”

“Did Barnes ever want to raise chickens?”

“Raise… chickens?”

“Yeah. Like, in a coop. In a yard, or something. Like a farmer.”

There’s a long silence on the other end.

“Uh, does Bucky want a chicken?”

Bucky leans forward and raises his voice. “Bucky _has_ a chicken. Henrietta. You’ll like her. She’s _plucky_.”

“You did _not_ just,” Sam groans.

“Wow, Buck. That was awful.” But Steve’s grin is audible. “Congrats on your… chicken, though?”

“Thanks. But we really need to know whether I wanted to raise chickens before getting a cow-gun mad science laser to the face.”

They watch the phone as Steve presumably thinks back to find an answer while also processing the nature of the question and the situation that could have given rise to that question. After almost a solid minute, there’s a response.

“Well, you were really fond of the farmhouses back in the War, and not just because of the farmers’ daughters. Um.” 

The pause is somehow an awkward one, and Sam can picture Steve’s discomfort. 

“You and Dum-Dum were talking one night. I was supposed to be asleep, but.” There’s some shifting sounds as Steve squirms. “And you sounded pretty wistful talking about settling down when it was all over.”

“See?” Bucky says, only a little defensively. “Electricity to the brain. I always liked chickens.”

“It was more white picket fence and a dozen children running around,” Steve says. “But, yeah, okay. I guess you could have been talking about chickens and farm life. City boy like you.”

Sam looks at Bucky, raising his eyebrows. “Well?”

Bucky doesn’t meet his eyes, instead looking at the phone like it betrayed him.

“Guys?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, it’s fine, Steve. It’s fine. We’re all good here.” Bucky glances at what he’s got of a coop so far, and then back at the phone. “I’ll introduce you to Henrietta when you get home. Don’t do anything stupid out there.”

“No stupider than normal,” Steve promises. “Look, you’ll _tell_ me if something’s wrong, right?”

Bucky hunches his shoulders, looking shifty.

“Sure will, Steve,” Sam says. “Talk soon.” He disconnects and then looks at Bucky again until he straightens his back.

“I still maintain it’s not a cow-gun side effect,” Bucky finally says. “I’m just quirky.”

“Sure you are.” Sam pats his knee. 

It’s true enough. Bucky’s gone through hobbies and obsessions in a rapid-fire succession since they got to a point where he could afford the mental energy to do so. Chickens could just be the next big thing to fleetingly occupy the majority of his attention. But… 

“But can we at least ask Bruce about it?” he asks. “After you get Henrietta settled.”

Bucky nods. “Fine.”

* * *

So it’s not specifically related to bovine radiation poisoning or anything like that, as it happens. And that’s good.

But it’s also bad, because that means Bucky’s latest “thing” is chickens. And chickens really aren’t an indoor hobby. Or a “balcony” hobby. 

Still, Sam manages to avoid complaining where Tony will hear him, and JARVIS kindly doesn’t turn informer, and Bucky manages to keep his own secret for all of three days.

By day three, though, Bucky’s looking morosely out the window at that chicken often enough that even Sam starts considering an alternate—and indoor—location for the bird.

It comes to a head the morning of day four, when Sam finds Bucky staring at the carton of grocery store eggs in the open door of their refrigerator looking miserable.

“You want to move the chicken back inside?” Sam can’t even believe he’s asking that. Or that he means it. But here they are, and this is his life.

Bucky lets the refrigerator door slowly close, but doesn’t otherwise move from the spot. “She needs to be free,” he whispers. “I’m as bad as fucking Tyson Foods. That’s no life for a chicken. Caged up on a fucking glass ledge. All alone.”

“Whoa, hey.” Sam moves around to be in Bucky’s field of vision.

“I can’t just put her back where I found her, Sam. No one has asked about a chicken, no one has responded to the posters or _anything_.”

Sam hadn’t realized Bucky put posters up. Wow. Given the sketchpad with the coop design, Sam would really like to see how those posters turned out. And not even in a mean way.

“If I take her to a shelter, she’ll just have a smaller cage until they put her down. The farms I called haven’t called back. No one wants this chicken but me, Sam. And I can’t give her a good home.” 

“Well, Henrietta can’t live in our kitchen. But, I don’t know, what about…” Sam racks his brain. 

The utility closet is bigger than the so-called balcony, but has no windows. There is not an available room for a chicken in this suite. He’s not up for having a chicken living in their bedroom. Steve probably will not be on board to share his bedroom or his art studio with a chicken.

Okay, stop-gap measure.

“Let’s put her in the bathroom, Barnes.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nat’s already back from—”

“I mean _our_ bathroom. We’ll use Steve’s while he’s in Patagonia, and Henrietta will live in ours. And we’ll build a bigger coop—a _better_ coop—to go in the living room.” The sacrifices he is making for this chicken. Sam deserves a medal for this.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Sam nods. “Go bring the chicken in. I’m going to research coop designs. We’re not half-assing this with some scrap lumber.”

* * *

“Hey, guys, I’m ho—oly crap, there’s a chicken in the living room.” Steve shuts the door behind him, but doesn’t shut his mouth. “I thought— I honestly thought… you were joking.”

Sam looks up from his tablet and waves a greeting, but he leaves his feet in Bucky’s lap because there isn’t a massage he’ll interrupt for anything short of national disaster. “Welcome home. How was Patagonia?”

“It was…” Steve slowly circles the coop, taking in the little ramp, the nesting box, the feeder and water dispenser, the very satisfied fluffy queen ruling that roost… and the plaque above the door reading “Welcome to the Barnes-yard” in red sharpie on cardboard.

“…fine,” he finishes, apparently deciding to roll with it instead of question the new addition that takes up a third of their living room. “It was fine. No casualties.”

“That’s not ‘fine,’” Bucky says as he pushes a metal thumb into the arch of Sam’s foot. “That’s ‘good.’ You need to adjust your expectations.”

Steve manages a little huff of laughter. “Well, when a guy comes home to house-chickens, it’s hard to know what adjustments a guy oughta make.”

Bucky shrugs. “You haven’t even met Henry yet. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“No roosters, Barnes.” Sam wiggles the toes on his neglected foot until Bucky switches over. “We agreed. You keep the one chicken, we add another when it’s convenient, and that’s it. Two hens. No roosters.”

“Sure, sure,” Bucky says, not convincing at all. “It’s a hen house, not a cock cage.”


End file.
